Gainful employment is a reality for most Druids. This forum is a place to discuss challenges and opportunities facing Druids in the workplace.

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Not sure if this is the right forum but since it happened at work, I thought to share it here.

I have a love/ hate relationship with work. I hate what I do but I love that I'm able to do it outdoors. Close to nature.

Today at work I became very frustrated, I wanted to study in preperation for Alban Elfed, since it will be my first time celebrating. There were many distractions and a negative energy surround me. I tried the light body excersise sitting and standing but I couldn't concentrate. I wrote a bit of poetry and it helped some. I finally got out of my vehicle and walked a little ways into the desert. I tried a grounding technique I had read about a while back, didn't work because yet again I couldn't concentrate. I finally squatted down, hands in the earth and visualized positive energy replacing the negative. It took a while but I was able to visualize and listen to the insects around me and relax. After I stood up I still felt some negative energy and again tried the grounding technique. After a while of walking and listening to nature positive energy completely replaced the negitive.

I felt like sharing my experience today. Have any of you had a similar one and willing to share?

I think it is a rare person who doesn't have some sort of ambiguous relationship with their work. There will always be aspects or situations that you'll hate. These can become stressful negative patterns that then affect your day to day life.

One of the things that Druidry has, for me, contained within it is the structures (via ritual and meditation) to manage those stresses and to transform negative patterns into positive patterns; much like your grounding technique.

Most dear is fire to the sons of men,
most sweet the sight of the sun;
good is health if one can but keep it,
and to live a life without shame. (Havamal 68)http://gewessiman.blogspot.co.uk

I'm my own boss, yet I sometimes despise the need for submitting to the daily grind, craving freedom more than anything else.

The Bardic path has brought with it a sidepath of working with zen-teachings that have been a part of my past education, and for me I try to work with seeing the beauty in everyday work, accepting what I can't change, and changing what I can't acccept. As a whole, I feel now that life is this thing that is happening right here and now, and everything is a part of it, and in that sense: sacred. Whenever I get to this stage of insight and flow, it feels more free than "free from work", it's a freedom at a soullevel. Yet, it's a work in progress, and I will regress to moping about "what could be" several times a week.

Today at work I became very frustrated, I wanted to study in preperation for Alban Elfed, since it will be my first time celebrating. There were many distractions and a negative energy surround me.

Hmmm...no idea what you do for a living, and am in no way casting judgment on *what* you do at work, as it is none of my business, but I get more fulfillment from my job (or any other activity) if I am fully engaged at the task at hand...I think the gurus call it mindfulness .....perhaps the frustration arises because you are expected to do one thing (because someone is presumably paying you) but want to do another (because it interests you more), and there is no practical way to resolve it in the moment....(and the thing that interests you rarely pays as well as the thing that bores you to tears...I think the secret to happiness hides in there somewhere...)...on the one hand, I think you are fortunate to have a job where you have some freedom to study and don't have an overlord telling you not to.....on another, I have been in jobs like that, and it can get pretty boring after a few months. I once had a job where I had to supervise an operation that more or less ran itself...and I was in the Sibera of my workplace, so no overlord would ever arrive....kind of Kafkaesque, looking back....so after I got bored with reading and trying to defeat tech support's webpage blocks, and yes...studying OBOD materials....I decided to learn to play lead guitar....so I spent hours a day for months on end enjoying my guitar and learning scales and becoming a fairly awful lead guitarist, but in the end I was still bored and frustrated and left for something more challenging.......

Thank you all for sharing. Yes I have plenty of time at work to study, not just the gwers but for my degree as well. Yes I get very board of it but am working hard to change jobs into something I will enjoy and be mind engaging.

I haven't quite got to the Zen like teachings of druidy as I am only up to gwers 7...or 8 can't remember right now. Looking forward to learning and growing in wisdom.

I haven't quite got to the Zen like teachings of druidy as I am only up to gwers 7...or 8 can't remember right now. Looking forward to learning and growing in wisdom.

The gwersi sometimes will put other teachings on your path. For me something along the way triggered returning to zen-meditation because I've studied it before. Maybe the same gwers will trigger something different in you. That is one of the great things of the bardic course for me: it mixes with your own lifepath into a very individual course.